“The Perpetual Loop of Fear and Desire”

### Exploring Gary Simmons’ **_Thin Ice_** at Hauser & Wirth: A Cultural and Artistic Inquiry

Gary Simmons returns to the forefront of contemporary art with his latest exhibition, **_Thin Ice_**, hosted at Hauser & Wirth in New York City’s bustling Soho district. This riveting body of work delves deep into racialized imagery, historical motifs, and movement as a metaphor for cultural tension. Blurred lines and partial erasures, signature techniques in Simmons’s oeuvre, reflect the fragility and complexity of collective memory, while simultaneously challenging viewers to grapple with America’s cyclical struggles with race, identity, and progress.

This exhibition features six black-and-white oil paintings illustrating Bosko, a racially caricatured cartoon character created in 1928, performing graceful yet poignant figure skating movements. It also includes other pieces, such as sculptures examining societal constructs and the repetition of harmful iconography in American popular culture. **_Thin Ice_** not only elevates Simmons’s artistic voice but also serves as a mirror to the undercurrents of America’s cultural psyche.

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### **The Historic Weight of Bosko**

At the heart of the exhibition lies Simmons’s recurring use of Bosko, an early animated cartoon character laden with racial stereotypes. Created by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising during animation’s “Golden Age,” Bosko represents one of the first African American-inspired characters to appear in film, albeit through a dehumanizing lens. Known for his oversized smile, exaggerated gestures, and vernacular expression “Mmmm! Dat sho’ is fine!,” Bosko was emblematic of pervasive caricatures used to portray Black identity in early entertainment.

However, Simmons reframes Bosko through distortion, wiping away the cruel specificity of his features. The artist’s blurred portrayal removes precise lines, turning Bosko from a fixed, offensive stereotype into a symbol caught in transition. This smearing technique leaves room for reinterpretation, forcing audiences to confront their understanding of racism’s lingering ghost in visual culture.

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### **Progressions on Ice: Layers of Irony**

Key to Simmons’s exhibition are the **_Going Through Progressions_** paintings. Here, Bosko occupies a glacial, otherworldly setting: he is an ice skater, frozen mid-pirouette, as his figure both blends and splinters into the icy background. The series highlights Simmons’s technique of purposeful smudging. Unlike his previous works, where this effect created haunting, ghost-like imagery, the smearing here evokes dynamism — the ephemeral passage of motion and time.

The irony in these works runs deep:

1. **A European Art Form Meets a Black Subject**
Ice skating, with its balletic roots in Europe, demands a performer’s body conform to idealized, linear beauty. Yet Bosko, an emblem of Blackness forged by prejudice, stands juxtaposed with the elegance of “port de bras,” the controlled arm movements central to ballet. This intersection becomes a metaphor for systemic tension: Black identity is admired for its originality, yet cultural systems demand it conform to rigid expectations.

2. **Repetition and Stagnation**
The paintings’ title, **_Progressions_**, embodies dual meanings. On one level, it mirrors a skater’s technical progression as they hone movements over time. On another, the cyclical motion alludes to societal stagnation — systems of prejudice and exclusion circling back endlessly without genuine change. As Bosko glides across Simmons’s canvases, the motion becomes metaphorical commentary on America’s cyclical reckoning with issues of race, fear, and acceptance.

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### **Visual Aesthetics as Socio-Cultural Metaphors**

Simmons’s paintings in **_Thin Ice_** transcend figure skating; they reflect a greater metaphor for racial visibility and erasure. The glacier-blue background reveals hints of nature’s primordial elements, hinting at fragility as well as endurance. Ice itself, an impermanent and easily fractured medium, symbolizes the delicate balance of inclusion and cultural acceptance in contemporary American society.

The blurred abstraction of Bosko’s body feels analogous to how marginalized identities are depicted in popular culture — often seen but seldom understood with true depth. Simmons captures this tension, illustrating the push and pull between hyper-visibility and historical erasure.

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### **The Role of Nostalgic Iconography in Critique**
Complementary works in the exhibition, including sculptures like *“Black Frosty”*, continue Simmons’s critique of racialized nostalgia within American culture. By juxtaposing familiar, nostalgic imagery with deeply ingrained stereotypes, Simmons underscores how such symbols are not relegated to history but rather permeate the present. These works challenge audiences to confront how dynamics of dehumanization are often masked under the guise of “whimsy” or “tradition.”

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### **Historical Context: Then and Now**
Simmons’s Bosko re-emerges at a time eerily reminiscent